A nationwide public sector strike by hundreds of thousands of workers has shut down schools, courts and hospitals in a bitter dispute over pay that has seen the army deployed against pickets.

Today thousands of workers have joined one of the largest strikes in South African history. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) – which is a partner in the ANC government – has called for a one-day solidarity strike today from public and private sector workers as the ongoing pay dispute enters its 13th day.

Reports say that Durban, South Africa’s major port has ground to a halt as bus and taxi drivers joined the strike while mass marches are planned across the country, prompting the government to warn it will use the army to ‘prevent violence.’

Cosatu is demanding at least a 10% pay rise, while the government is offering 7.25%, revised from 6% before the strike action. With the rate of inflation at around 7% the pay ‘rise’ on offer is in fact a freeze after several years of falling real incomes.

On Friday 2,500 soldiers were deployed, firing rubber bullets at pickets. The government has so far sacked over 600 public health workers who are not allowed to strike under South African law, whilst it is withholding pay from the thousands of others talking action. Cosatu has said the strike will not end until such threats are withdrawn.

A weekly 30 minute review of news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio. With times and freqs for listening at home. 2 files- broadcast and slow-modem streaming. Free to rebroadcast. China, Netherlands, Cuba, and Russia.

The neoclassical theory dominant today is different from the Keynesian theory that defined the decades after the 2nd World War. "Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups." (Paul Krugman)

Violent Muslim, Christian and Jewish extremists invoke the same rhetoric of "good" and "evil" and the best way to fight them is to tackle the problems that drive people to extremism, according to a report obtained by Reuters.

They say the mighty can fall hard. But, really, how mighty is, or was, Paris Hilton? Sure she was thee glamour girl with her own perfume, handbags and fans; but, how did she, really matter in respect to substantial events and important social issues that have serious consequences? She didn’t and doesn’t—she was not even a light-weight.

For the Kurdish people outrageous acts of oppression in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, and Syria have included mass murder, suppression of language rights, exploitation of Kurdish resources with nothing but poverty given in return, deprivations of national citizenships, and the brutal suppression of political representation. Despite the oppression the Kurdish people have faced, they continue to speak their language and organize politically and, at times, militarily to fight back nearly everywhere they continue to live as a native population.